Siemens Enterprise changes its name to Unify

Siemens Enterprise Communications has changed its name to Unify and now hopes to take advantage of a growing interest in hosted unified communications.

Siemens Enterprise Communications has changed its name to Unify and now hopes to take advantage of a growing interest in hosted unified communications.

The rebranding comes at time when the way enterprises communicate is changing. Thanks to trends such as bring-your-own-device, employees are no longer tied to a desk and a desk phone for their work.

For example, 87 percent of North American enterprises plan to add video conferencing to their unified communications infrastructure by August next year, according to a recent survey conducted by Infonetics Research.

At the same time, the use of the cloud is also on the rise: 22 percent of respondents had implemented portions of their unified communications system in a private cloud and 19 percent had done so in a public cloud, the market research company said.

That's good news for the German company and its Project Ansible. The project was announced in June and will combine cloud-based communications using voice, video, text and remote screen sharing. Users will be able to move conversations between different devices. Initial trials will start in January with general availability in July.

Less good news, at least for the North American market, is that Cisco Systems and Microsoft were seen as the unified communications leaders thanks to their installed base and perceived positions of leadership, according to the survey.

Siemens Enterprise or now Unify and its competitors will also have to address the fact that for businesses not using unified communications, cost is the number one barrier, according to Infonetics.